Home viewing of prerecorded video programs and movies has become a major form of entertainment in this country and throughout much of the world. Technologies such as videocassette players and videodisk players, e.g. digital video disk (DVD) and laser disk players, allow users to view prerecorded video programs and movies at home on their own television sets. Viewing prerecorded video programs has many advantages over watching programs and movies on broadcast television. Viewers can choose their own programs and movies and watch them at a time of their own choosing. Video players also allow users to stop, pause, replay, slow motion replay and fast forward the program at any time while viewing. With broadcast television on the other hand, viewers have a limited selection of programs and movies, which are shown on a fixed schedule. Pay-per-view television offered by cable television and satellite television broadcasting companies has increased the selection of programs and movies available and the choices of viewing times, but the practical limitations of broadcast bandwidth restricts pay-per-view television to a limited selection and fixed schedules.
The popularity of prerecorded video programs and movies as home entertainment has given rise to a large infrastructure for production and commercial distribution of prerecorded video materials. Video stores that rent and/or sell prerecorded movies and other video programs on videocassettes and/or video disks have become ubiquitous. Video rental stores offer a broad selection of movies that users can take home and view at any time during the rental period, which is generally from one to several days. However, video rental stores present a number of inconveniences for the user. The user must travel to the video rental store to select and bring home a video to watch, which is inconvenient and time consuming. Store hours may be limited. The selection of movies available can be limited by the number of copies on hand. Popular movies may not be available if the number of copies on hand is not sufficient to meet the demand by customers. After viewing it, the user must travel to the video rental store again to return the video. Late fees and penalties for damage or loss of videos can be a significant drawback for some users. Broadcast television, for all of its limitations, has the advantage that viewers do not have to leave their homes because the programming is transmitted directly to their television sets.
This video distribution system is also a very inefficient use of resources. Vast quantities of video recording media, such as videocassettes and videodisks, must be manufactured and recorded to supply all of the video stores. Transportation costs, storage costs and the cost of retail space and personnel all add to the expense of video distribution.
It would be desirable to provide a system for distribution of movies and other video programs for home viewing that has the advantages of broadcast television and of the current video distribution system, while avoiding many of the disadvantages of both. To this end, it is desirable to provide a system that allows viewers to select and buy and/or rent movies and other video programming content without having to leave their homes. The system should transmit the video programming content directly to the viewer's home or other selected locations. The video programming content should be provided in a format that allows the viewer to play the movie or video at any desired time and allows the viewer to stop, pause, replay, slow motion replay and fast forward the program at any time while viewing. The system should provide a broad selection of movies and other video programs without the costs and inefficiencies associated with the current video distribution system that relies on multiple copies of videos distributed through a myriad of local video rental stores. The system should allow multiple users to view a movie or video simultaneously without the need to keep an inventory of multiple copies.
Video-on-demand systems have been suggested as an alternative to the current video distribution system. To date, however, because of technical limitations such systems have not been successfully commercialized, except on a very small scale. For example, centralized video-on-demand systems are available for hotels and similar applications. Examples of such systems are described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,009,465 granted to Decker, et. al. for Entertainment and information systems and related management networks for a remote video delivery system, and U.S. reissue Pat. No. RE34,611 issued to Fenwick for Video selection and distribution system. These systems can only handle a small number of viewers at any one time because they are limited by the number of video players in the system and the number of copies of any particular video on hand.
A convergence of technologies from the audiovisual, computer and telecommunications fields now makes it possible to create a practical large-scale centralized video-on-demand system for selecting, downloading and playing prerecorded materials. To be commercially successful, such a video-on-demand system must be high speed, reliable, robust and fault tolerant and it must be configured to resist data corruption.